From: Laura Quilter <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:18:06 -0400

Sandy,

I take it that the problem is with university professors whose work is
directly related to (and partially funded by) their university jobs.
If a professor creates something unrelated to their job -- they teach
history of science; they wrote a popular song -- then conflict of
interest wouldn't really arise.

Universities have often refrained from asserting ownership under
work-for-hire of faculty's teaching and scholarly works, out of
tradition and so forth, but if they are regularly being sued on those
works, then they might choose not to forego their own legal rights.

Laura

----------------------------------
Laura Markstein Quilter / [log in to unmask]
Librarian, Geek, Attorney, Teacher
Copyright and Information Policy Librarian
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
[log in to unmask]

Lecturer, Simmons College, GSLIS
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On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 4:45 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:36:31 -0500
>
> It might be a problem if the universities, as employers, claimed
> ownership of their faculty's copyrights. Generally, however, those
> copyrights are transferred to the publishers, who become the owners
> and therefore have a vested interest in protecting their property. How
> is this situation you describe different from a professor who writes a
> popular song being indirectly implicated in a suit brought by a member
> of the RIAA against the professor's university for infringing
> copyright by reproducing it without permission?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
> At 5:17 PM -0700 4/14/13, Heather Morrison wrote:
>
> > This post explores whether Access Copyright and other copyright collectives participating in the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations, in suing universities over "intellectual property", inadvertently and indirectly put university scholars in the position of inadvertently and indirectly suing their employers. If so, there are some interesting implications.
> >
> > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/04/access-copyright-lawsuit-are-some-of-us.html
> >
> > Dr. Heather Morrison
> > Freedom for scholarship in the internet age
> > http://summit.sfu.ca/item/12537